Preference morality

[PyramidHead]

The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'd sure like to see naked pictures of my neighbor's wife. I guess the moral thing to do is to send her some of me!

The Platinum Rule: don't do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you.

Well... I wouldn't want my neighbor's wife to AVOID sending me naked pictures of herself, so I'd better not avoid sending her dick pics.

The Diamond Rule: don't do unto others as they wouldn't have you do unto them.

Well, shit.

Why do moral philosophers spend so much time and effort trying to define "the good", when we can just ask people directly what they want or don't want? Of course, one person's wants can be another person's not-wants, but surely there's a way to figure out which wants get priority. Hypothetically, if we could objectively measure how badly people want or don't want things, we could rank their preferences in terms of their severity. Basic needs would obviously be near the top of the list, and would necessarily be higher than preferences that violate someone else's rights or do harm. All other things being equal, my desire not to be deprived of my belongings would be much higher than your desire for my belongings. It seems to work, but I wonder what the answer would be if someone wanted my belongings really, really badly? Is it possible for their want to be more severe than my not-want in that case?

One way to find out would be to look at the consequences of prioritizing one over the other, and satisfy whatever preference results in the least number of additional unsatisfied preferences (again, taking severity into account). Robbing me of my belongings would cause a lot of other important preferences, both mine and my family's, to go unsatisfied. It's hard to imagine a scenario where not letting someone have all my belongings would rise to that level of deprivation. Let's try anyway. Imagine that if he doesn't get what he wants--which in this case is my belongings--a much larger number of people will undergo a more severe frustration of their own preferences. Taken to this extreme, I think I'd be obliged to give him my belongings if it were the only way to avert this eventuality. It's only a hypothetical anyway, but at least it doesn't damage the original premise even when it's stretched to absurd lengths.

Preference morality has the advantage of being the closest we can get to a truly objective system, because there exists definite information about what people would rather not be the case, even if it needs to be sought out. It's not like pleasure vs. pain systems, where you have to account for people who would like a certain balance of the two, people who are masochists, and so on. Those problems all disappear if you just go by what each individual actually says they would prefer. There's something inherently bad, from the perspective of a given person, about having a want or a need go unsatisfied. Even if that want is something meta, like the want to be denied satisfaction for a while so it will be extra good when I finally get it. That counts too.

The endgame of this system is interesting to consider. If a perfect world is one where everybody has what they want, then a perfect world is one where there are no unsatisfied preferences. This means that there is no advantage to wanting something and then getting it, compared to not wanting it in the first place. Either way, you don't have any more wants or needs. But the logical extension of this principle is a world without wanters, without preferrers. It reveals the truth about our unfortunate condition, as minds capable of feeling the gap between reality and a model of reality we conceive as better in some way. The source of all our problems is that gap, and our ability to discern it (actually, we create it, by making up models of reality and judging them as better than the real thing). Even if you don't accept preference morality, it can be instructive to ruminate on this point: if there is anything like natural evil in the world, it isn't an external force, it's the conscious mind itself, anything with the ability to react with felt negativity to a state of affairs it does not want.

 

[abaddon]

.... Even if you don't accept preference morality, it can be instructive to ruminate on this point: if there is anything like natural evil in the world, it isn't an external force, it's the conscious mind itself, anything with the ability to react with felt negativity to a state of affairs it does not want.

I think an effective approach must entail tapering your preferences and adjusting to life's conditions. In your scenario, it's preferred that a fundamental characteristic of all life is adjusted to suit human preferences. This is sure to frustrate anyone wanting this. On the large scale, people thinking their preferences are the most precious thing in existence is a destructive "ethics". Human preferences are sometimes antagonistic to self, society and nature. So this approach of finding "natural evil" in the world, rather than what's adjustable in human preferences, seems backwards to me.

Another approach is choosing to like the conditions of life better. It's a better choice than wishing to indulge all preferences. "Amor fati"... If one succeeded a bit more than half-way then he'd love life, including its frustrations, better than not. And that's more do-able than altering how all life is.

Life evolves by struggle. Individuals do too, in the sense of psychological growth. We reach mountaintops by climbing the mountain-side. States of flow (trying to flesh out that metaphor a little) happen when you're challenged. Once you're on your mountain and come back down then, yeah, you're bored again. So we need new challenge. Are the ups and downs worth it? Yes! And not just for the exuberant states. Because the climbing isn't bad either, unless a person is sticking pins in his own eyes, telling himself "This is so frustrating! I prefer to get what I want with no effort!"

From my perspective, your conundrum doesn't seem like such a conundrum (referring to the bit of your post that I quoted). There's no "natural evil" in life's challenges if one welcomes that state of affairs. One could choose getting over resenting it, if that's his native reaction. This outlook is akin to the stoic advice to attend to what you can change but don't fret over what you can't. I'd add to do more than "don't fret over" it. "Felt negativity" isn't inevitable, because the very attitude can be overcome as well.

So embracing the struggle as the point of living solves the conundrum.

 

[Bronzeage]

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. It seems simple enough, but there is no principle so simple that someone cannot use it to create an absurd situation.

The problem is, morality and morals are general terms and the application of morality and moral codes are specific.

The basis of all morality and moral codes are two simple edicts, don't kill your friends and don't steal your friend's stuff. Everything which comes afterwards is an argument over definitions. Who is my friend and what is his stuff? Every culture develops their peculiar definitions, which depend upon the environment and resources. The concept of good and bad have no real application in morality, except when used as synonyms for moral and immoral.

The problem with moral codes and morality is that the code stays fairly constant, but the definitions change. It's pretty clear where the boundaries are when friends are family members, out to third cousins. It gets really weird when some guy comes along and declares that all men are brothers. Suddenly, there is no one on Earth eligible to be robbed and murdered.

 

[bilby]

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. It seems simple enough, but there is no principle so simple that someone cannot use it to create an absurd situation.

The problem is, morality and morals are general terms and the application of morality and moral codes are specific.

The basis of all morality and moral codes are two simple edicts, don't kill your friends and don't steal your friend's stuff. Everything which comes afterwards is an argument over definitions. Who is my friend and what is his stuff? Every culture develops their peculiar definitions, which depend upon the environment and resources. The concept of good and bad have no real application in morality, except when used as synonyms for moral and immoral.

The problem with moral codes and morality is that the code stays fairly constant, but the definitions change. It's pretty clear where the boundaries are when friends are family members, out to third cousins. It gets really weird when some guy comes along and declares that all men are brothers. Suddenly, there is no one on Earth eligible to be robbed and murdered.

That's only a problem for amateurs.

The pros know that you can just redefine those you wish to rob or murder as 'not men' (or 'not real men'). 'Subhuman', if you will.

 

[PyramidHead]

[FONT=&]

.... Even if you don't accept preference morality, it can be instructive to ruminate on this point: if there is anything like natural evil in the world, it isn't an external force, it's the conscious mind itself, anything with the ability to react with felt negativity to a state of affairs it does not want.

I think an effective approach must entail tapering your preferences and adjusting to life's conditions. In your scenario, it's preferred that a fundamental characteristic of all life is adjusted to suit human preferences. This is sure to frustrate anyone wanting this. On the large scale, people thinking their preferences are the most precious thing in existence is a destructive "ethics". Human preferences are sometimes antagonistic to self, society and nature. So this approach of finding "natural evil" in the world, rather than what's adjustable in human preferences, seems backwards to me.

Another approach is choosing to like the conditions of life better. It's a better choice than wishing to indulge all preferences. "Amor fati"... If one succeeded a bit more than half-way then he'd love life, including its frustrations, better than not. And that's more do-able than altering how all life is.

Life evolves by struggle. Individuals do too, in the sense of psychological growth. We reach mountaintops by climbing the mountain-side. States of flow (trying to flesh out that metaphor a little) happen when you're challenged. Once you're on your mountain and come back down then, yeah, you're bored again. So we need new challenge. Are the ups and downs worth it? Yes! And not just for the exuberant states. Because the climbing isn't bad either, unless a person is sticking pins in his own eyes, telling himself "This is so frustrating! I prefer to get what I want with no effort!"

From my perspective, your conundrum doesn't seem like such a conundrum (referring to the bit of your post that I quoted). There's no "natural evil" in life's challenges if one welcomes that state of affairs. One could choose getting over resenting it, if that's his native reaction. This outlook is akin to the stoic advice to attend to what you can change but don't fret over what you can't. I'd add to do more than "don't fret over" it. "Felt negativity" isn't inevitable, because the very attitude can be overcome as well.

So embracing the struggle as the point of living solves the conundrum.
[/FONT]

That is definitely a valid approach, but it cannot be argued with a straight face as anything other than a reaction to the way life actually is. It is therefore a vindictive strategy, something invented in order to cope with reality, not a discovery of "the point of living" or something so illustrious. And as I said in my opening post, everything you describe can be subsumed under the model of indirect preference satisfaction. One who sublimates the challenges of life into a kind of game with its ups and downs would prefer that dynamic over a life free of hardships. Totally permitted under preference theory.

I also should mention that species doesn't come into account here, so your remarks about human preferences are a little off-center in my opinion. Any organism that shows some degree of consciously preferring one state over another, in the sense that being in the unwanted state constitutes a felt harm and not just a functional one, is a moral agent worthy of consideration.

If you meant instead that we should just go with the flow and accept the conditions life has set up for us, that too is a bit of a cop-out. We already reject what the universe has in store for us in every action we take that goes against entropy. We feed and clothe ourselves, stave off the inevitable boredom you described by inventing projects to keep us occupied, and struggle to fit everything into just the right mixture to satisfy our preference for an emotionally stable life. These are all effective strategies, but at root, they are the same sort of maneuver as joining a religion or picking up a drinking habit.

 

[PyramidHead]

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. It seems simple enough, but there is no principle so simple that someone cannot use it to create an absurd situation.

I've yet to see one that preference morality (and more specifically negative preference utilitarianism) is unable to withstand, but that all depends on one's definition of absurd.

 

[rousseau]

The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'd sure like to see naked pictures of my neighbor's wife. I guess the moral thing to do is to send her some of me!

The Platinum Rule: don't do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you.

Well... I wouldn't want my neighbor's wife to AVOID sending me naked pictures of herself, so I'd better not avoid sending her dick pics.

The Diamond Rule: don't do unto others as they wouldn't have you do unto them.

Well, shit.

Why do moral philosophers spend so much time and effort trying to define "the good", when we can just ask people directly what they want or don't want? Of course, one person's wants can be another person's not-wants, but surely there's a way to figure out which wants get priority. Hypothetically, if we could objectively measure how badly people want or don't want things, we could rank their preferences in terms of their severity. Basic needs would obviously be near the top of the list, and would necessarily be higher than preferences that violate someone else's rights or do harm. All other things being equal, my desire not to be deprived of my belongings would be much higher than your desire for my belongings. It seems to work, but I wonder what the answer would be if someone wanted my belongings really, really badly? Is it possible for their want to be more severe than my not-want in that case?

One way to find out would be to look at the consequences of prioritizing one over the other, and satisfy whatever preference results in the least number of additional unsatisfied preferences (again, taking severity into account). Robbing me of my belongings would cause a lot of other important preferences, both mine and my family's, to go unsatisfied. It's hard to imagine a scenario where not letting someone have all my belongings would rise to that level of deprivation. Let's try anyway. Imagine that if he doesn't get what he wants--which in this case is my belongings--a much larger number of people will undergo a more severe frustration of their own preferences. Taken to this extreme, I think I'd be obliged to give him my belongings if it were the only way to avert this eventuality. It's only a hypothetical anyway, but at least it doesn't damage the original premise even when it's stretched to absurd lengths.

Preference morality has the advantage of being the closest we can get to a truly objective system, because there exists definite information about what people would rather not be the case, even if it needs to be sought out. It's not like pleasure vs. pain systems, where you have to account for people who would like a certain balance of the two, people who are masochists, and so on. Those problems all disappear if you just go by what each individual actually says they would prefer. There's something inherently bad, from the perspective of a given person, about having a want or a need go unsatisfied. Even if that want is something meta, like the want to be denied satisfaction for a while so it will be extra good when I finally get it. That counts too.

The endgame of this system is interesting to consider. If a perfect world is one where everybody has what they want, then a perfect world is one where there are no unsatisfied preferences. This means that there is no advantage to wanting something and then getting it, compared to not wanting it in the first place. Either way, you don't have any more wants or needs. But the logical extension of this principle is a world without wanters, without preferrers. It reveals the truth about our unfortunate condition, as minds capable of feeling the gap between reality and a model of reality we conceive as better in some way. The source of all our problems is that gap, and our ability to discern it (actually, we create it, by making up models of reality and judging them as better than the real thing). Even if you don't accept preference morality, it can be instructive to ruminate on this point: if there is anything like natural evil in the world, it isn't an external force, it's the conscious mind itself, anything with the ability to react with felt negativity to a state of affairs it does not want.

I'm not convinced that this is a universal aspect of the human condition, at least in the sense of calling our condition 'unfortunate'.

To the brunt of the most fecund of the population, life is innately enjoyable, even when we haven't achieved all of our desires. If it wasn't, there would be no means to propagate our species. And so what many thinkers regard as 'problems' actually have no existence in the minds of many people, until the problems are so dire that they.. actually are problems.

Most of the human race, most of the time is like a squirrel happily hopping along, looking for nuts.

 

[PyramidHead]

The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'd sure like to see naked pictures of my neighbor's wife. I guess the moral thing to do is to send her some of me!

The Platinum Rule: don't do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you.

Well... I wouldn't want my neighbor's wife to AVOID sending me naked pictures of herself, so I'd better not avoid sending her dick pics.

The Diamond Rule: don't do unto others as they wouldn't have you do unto them.

Well, shit.

Why do moral philosophers spend so much time and effort trying to define "the good", when we can just ask people directly what they want or don't want? Of course, one person's wants can be another person's not-wants, but surely there's a way to figure out which wants get priority. Hypothetically, if we could objectively measure how badly people want or don't want things, we could rank their preferences in terms of their severity. Basic needs would obviously be near the top of the list, and would necessarily be higher than preferences that violate someone else's rights or do harm. All other things being equal, my desire not to be deprived of my belongings would be much higher than your desire for my belongings. It seems to work, but I wonder what the answer would be if someone wanted my belongings really, really badly? Is it possible for their want to be more severe than my not-want in that case?

One way to find out would be to look at the consequences of prioritizing one over the other, and satisfy whatever preference results in the least number of additional unsatisfied preferences (again, taking severity into account). Robbing me of my belongings would cause a lot of other important preferences, both mine and my family's, to go unsatisfied. It's hard to imagine a scenario where not letting someone have all my belongings would rise to that level of deprivation. Let's try anyway. Imagine that if he doesn't get what he wants--which in this case is my belongings--a much larger number of people will undergo a more severe frustration of their own preferences. Taken to this extreme, I think I'd be obliged to give him my belongings if it were the only way to avert this eventuality. It's only a hypothetical anyway, but at least it doesn't damage the original premise even when it's stretched to absurd lengths.

Preference morality has the advantage of being the closest we can get to a truly objective system, because there exists definite information about what people would rather not be the case, even if it needs to be sought out. It's not like pleasure vs. pain systems, where you have to account for people who would like a certain balance of the two, people who are masochists, and so on. Those problems all disappear if you just go by what each individual actually says they would prefer. There's something inherently bad, from the perspective of a given person, about having a want or a need go unsatisfied. Even if that want is something meta, like the want to be denied satisfaction for a while so it will be extra good when I finally get it. That counts too.

The endgame of this system is interesting to consider. If a perfect world is one where everybody has what they want, then a perfect world is one where there are no unsatisfied preferences. This means that there is no advantage to wanting something and then getting it, compared to not wanting it in the first place. Either way, you don't have any more wants or needs. But the logical extension of this principle is a world without wanters, without preferrers. It reveals the truth about our unfortunate condition, as minds capable of feeling the gap between reality and a model of reality we conceive as better in some way. The source of all our problems is that gap, and our ability to discern it (actually, we create it, by making up models of reality and judging them as better than the real thing). Even if you don't accept preference morality, it can be instructive to ruminate on this point: if there is anything like natural evil in the world, it isn't an external force, it's the conscious mind itself, anything with the ability to react with felt negativity to a state of affairs it does not want.

I'm not convinced that this is a universal aspect of the human condition, at least in the sense of calling our condition 'unfortunate'.

To the brunt of the most fecund of the population, life is innately enjoyable, even when we haven't achieved all of our desires. If it wasn't, there would be no means to propagate our species. And so what many thinkers regard as 'problems' actually have no existence in the minds of many people, until the problems are so dire that they.. actually are problems.

Most of the human race, most of the time is like a squirrel happily hopping along, looking for nuts.

I'd love some of whatever you're smoking.

 

[rousseau]

I'm not convinced that this is a universal aspect of the human condition, at least in the sense of calling our condition 'unfortunate'.

To the brunt of the most fecund of the population, life is innately enjoyable, even when we haven't achieved all of our desires. If it wasn't, there would be no means to propagate our species. And so what many thinkers regard as 'problems' actually have no existence in the minds of many people, until the problems are so dire that they.. actually are problems.

Most of the human race, most of the time is like a squirrel happily hopping along, looking for nuts.

I'd love some of whatever you're smoking.

I don't know. I've always gotten the impression from your posts that you don't enjoy your life very much. Believe me, I get it. I just don't think that's as common of an experience as you think, and so the whole model of 'what we want versus what we have causing all of our angst', it makes sense, but I don't think it's universally applicable. Many, many people I know don't seem to think in those terms.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'd love some of whatever you're smoking.

I don't know. I've always gotten the impression from your posts that you don't enjoy your life very much. Believe me, I get it. I just don't think that's as common of an experience as you think, and so the whole model of 'what we want versus what we have causing all of our angst', it makes sense, but I don't think it's universally applicable. Many, many people I know don't seem to think in those terms.

I really, really have to correct you on that. I enjoy my life and I'd rather keep living it. The conclusions I'm reaching have nothing to do with the particulars of my experience, which is why I am always careful to point out that even the best lives are nonetheless subject to the features I'm talking about. My goal is to expose something at the root of life, conscious life specifically, that so many people are happy to just ignore without seriously examining it. It doesn't mean you can't like your life, can't do things that make you happy, and can't feel generally okay each day, as I do. But it's intellectually dishonest to put that as the default state when it's actually a counter, a fleeing from the basic layout of things, which under an unbiased and critical evaluation is mostly antithetical to the things we want.

I reacted to your reply the way I did because it's just a dopey thing to say. Most people in the world just frolicking around like happy little squirrels--do me a favor and Google how many people are hungry right now and don't know if they'll ever eat again. While you're at it, maybe look into the quality of life for your average squirrel. But that's not even the point, because I'm not just saying things are bad only for people who go hungry every day. It's the fact of our ability to prefer being satiated to being hungry, and the discomfort we feel as those states drift apart without our regular supervision, that constitutes the 'unfortunate' part of consciousness. It's a structural failing, not an incidental fact about the state of the world.

This thread isn't so much about pessimism, though, as it is about how we can improve our moral systems by incorporating preferences as a substitute for one-size-fits-all concepts like pleasure and pain.

 

[rousseau]

I don't know. I've always gotten the impression from your posts that you don't enjoy your life very much. Believe me, I get it. I just don't think that's as common of an experience as you think, and so the whole model of 'what we want versus what we have causing all of our angst', it makes sense, but I don't think it's universally applicable. Many, many people I know don't seem to think in those terms.

I really, really have to correct you on that. I enjoy my life and I'd rather keep living it. The conclusions I'm reaching have nothing to do with the particulars of my experience, which is why I am always careful to point out that even the best lives are nonetheless subject to the features I'm talking about. My goal is to expose something at the root of life, conscious life specifically, that so many people are happy to just ignore without seriously examining it. It doesn't mean you can't like your life, can't do things that make you happy, and can't feel generally okay each day, as I do. But it's intellectually dishonest to put that as the default state when it's actually a counter, a fleeing from the basic layout of things, which under an unbiased and critical evaluation is mostly antithetical to the things we want.

I reacted to your reply the way I did because it's just a dopey thing to say. Most people in the world just frolicking around like happy little squirrels--do me a favor and Google how many people are hungry right now and don't know if they'll ever eat again. While you're at it, maybe look into the quality of life for your average squirrel. But that's not even the point, because I'm not just saying things are bad only for people who go hungry every day. It's the fact of our ability to prefer being satiated to being hungry, and the discomfort we feel as those states drift apart without our regular supervision, that constitutes the 'unfortunate' part of consciousness. It's a structural failing, not an incidental fact about the state of the world.

This thread isn't so much about pessimism, though, as it is about how we can improve our moral systems by incorporating preferences as a substitute for one-size-fits-all concepts like pleasure and pain.

Just thought I'd address the main point that your system is interesting to ruminate on, and illuminates one of life's fundamental realities. I see your point above, and sure.. serious problems *do* exist, but I don't think angst is as psychologically common as you'd think, sans major problems. At least angst about missing out on some ideal version of reality. Sure, people do get angsty when something is missing, but I'd think most intuitively accept that as the way the world works, and don't put much clout in some ideal reality that's just out of reach. The problem you're mentioning is there, but I just don't think it's as psychologically taxing on the average person as you seem to be implying.

RE: the moral system itself, it makes sense, but as with any given moral system the only problem is how to accomplish it in reality, a world that's prone to power dynamics. It's great to say 'just give everyone what they want'. That's not the problem, the problem is how to force self-interested people to give up what they have so people can fulfill their preferences.

It's an interesting thing to think about when you start considering the difference in lifestyles between people of different nations. I know a huge number of people in my city who would call themselves 'moral, upstanding citizens', but realistically they only contribute to their own community, for their own benefit, while huge swaths of people go unnoticed around the world. I think this points to the fact that, materially, good-will is limited, and ultimately every body or group has to look out for itself first.

 

[PyramidHead]

I really, really have to correct you on that. I enjoy my life and I'd rather keep living it. The conclusions I'm reaching have nothing to do with the particulars of my experience, which is why I am always careful to point out that even the best lives are nonetheless subject to the features I'm talking about. My goal is to expose something at the root of life, conscious life specifically, that so many people are happy to just ignore without seriously examining it. It doesn't mean you can't like your life, can't do things that make you happy, and can't feel generally okay each day, as I do. But it's intellectually dishonest to put that as the default state when it's actually a counter, a fleeing from the basic layout of things, which under an unbiased and critical evaluation is mostly antithetical to the things we want.

I reacted to your reply the way I did because it's just a dopey thing to say. Most people in the world just frolicking around like happy little squirrels--do me a favor and Google how many people are hungry right now and don't know if they'll ever eat again. While you're at it, maybe look into the quality of life for your average squirrel. But that's not even the point, because I'm not just saying things are bad only for people who go hungry every day. It's the fact of our ability to prefer being satiated to being hungry, and the discomfort we feel as those states drift apart without our regular supervision, that constitutes the 'unfortunate' part of consciousness. It's a structural failing, not an incidental fact about the state of the world.

This thread isn't so much about pessimism, though, as it is about how we can improve our moral systems by incorporating preferences as a substitute for one-size-fits-all concepts like pleasure and pain.

Just thought I'd address the main point that your system is interesting to ruminate on, and illuminates one of life's fundamental realities. I see your point above, and sure.. serious problems *do* exist, but I don't think angst is as psychologically common as you'd think, sans major problems. At least angst about missing out on some ideal version of reality. Sure, people do get angsty when something is missing, but I'd think most intuitively accept that as the way the world works, and don't put much clout in some ideal reality that's just out of reach. The problem you're mentioning is there, but I just don't think it's as psychologically taxing on the average person as you seem to be implying.

To clarify my position, I am not making the empirical statement that human beings are actually experiencing angst about their lives all the time. The brain has evolved ways to cope with the pitfalls of being conscious. The fact that these coping mechanisms can be successful does not change the underlying issue.

As an analogy, think about a village perched on the edge of a cliff, continuously battered by strong winds. By some miracle of cooperation and ingenuity, they all worked out a system of measuring the direction of the winds and having designated groups of people stand in various locations to offset the effects of the wind with their own weight. This has to be maintained constantly, so there are rotating shifts to let people eat and sleep, but it's like any other job. Even with the counterbalances provided by these people, the village is still shaky, but livable. If they fail to keep the system going, the village will tumble into the sea. After generations, they became used to the situation, and most people don't know any other way of life. Songs and poetry are written about the noble counterbalancers, and the endless wind is accepted as just the way the world works. The point I'm making is that the relatively contented emotional state of the villagers is one fact, and the reality that their village is in peril at all times is another. It is possible to acknowledge that they have grown accustomed to their situation while still correctly observing that it is an unfortunate situation. One of those villagers, without any major angst or depression about life, may nonetheless wish more people would recognize the serious disadvantage of their condition. The thing that everybody is singing and writing poetry about is actually a negative force that causes all their problems, which they have sublimated into something positive. That might be a healthy response, but the nature of what they're trying to sublimate is still something worth knowing, if only for authenticity's sake. But I digress, and you probably get what I'm trying to say.

 

[another1]

you probably get what I'm trying to say

Trying to. Almost there. I'll tell you what I want, since it is all about demanding and granting or whatever. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm supposed to tell you what I really want, right? Well, this is what I want... I want world hunger to end. It humiliating and just ignorant that there are still people starving in 2017. I am sick and tired of these irritating children complaining about starvation. If I had one wish it would be to feed everyone, just to shut them up. Their bloated bellies are repugnant. The money it takes to invade my television with their ugliness would surely be enough to buy a billion fucking tacos. These kids... they ALWAYS have flies buzzing around them. Pathetic. Wide, condemned eyes looking at the $20,000 camera, wondering why someone doesn't give a fuck about them. Jesus Fucking Christ shut these people up already. I'm going to have to put on some underwear someday and go see for my fucking self. They're no less human than I am. Last I checked there was enough food around to make everyone I know a fatfuck. But these little bastards over in whereverville are circled by buzzards and disease all day because (insert mystifying reason here). The selfishness of woman and mankind is supposedly out of ignorance, but that seems to be a stale excuse with all of the available access to information. I read that it is getting worse, not better. It will always get worse because more new people are coming down the pipelines. Don't bother putting a bow on it and saying something positive because you're full of shit.

That is my wish. Shut them up forever. It makes me ashamed to be alive in this world. I'm one bad decision away from starving to death myself, but at least I have prison to depend on. All Americans have to do to get free meals for a year is spit on a Goddamn cop. You'll be hooked up properly if you do that. The worst American prison would be like a country club to these poor shitheads in the "third world". You've got a big problem when the world is abstracted like that... and put into numbers. Third? WOW! Last I heard there was just one world. A dumb one.

That is what I want. It isn't for myself. Well, it kinda is, because I'm tired of the foolish drama. But yeah, I feel like a total piece of shit as an assumingly powerless person in a world of starving kids. I don't know how anyone can sleep at night honestly. At this point it is beyond redundant. Shutting them the fuck up should be top on everyone's list.

How does my wish factor into whatever you guys talking about here?

 

[rousseau]

you probably get what I'm trying to say

Trying to. Almost there. I'll tell you what I want, since it is all about demanding and granting or whatever. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm supposed to tell you what I really want, right? Well, this is what I want... I want world hunger to end. It humiliating and just ignorant that there are still people starving in 2017. I am sick and tired of these irritating children complaining about starvation. If I had one wish it would be to feed everyone, just to shut them up. Their bloated bellies are repugnant. The money it takes to invade my television with their ugliness would surely be enough to buy a billion fucking tacos. These kids... they ALWAYS have flies buzzing around them. Pathetic. Wide, condemned eyes looking at the $20,000 camera, wondering why someone doesn't give a fuck about them. Jesus Fucking Christ shut these people up already. I'm going to have to put on some underwear someday and go see for my fucking self. They're no less human than I am. Last I checked there was enough food around to make everyone I know a fatfuck. But these little bastards over in whereverville are circled by buzzards and disease all day because (insert mystifying reason here). The selfishness of woman and mankind is supposedly out of ignorance, but that seems to be a stale excuse with all of the available access to information. I read that it is getting worse, not better. It will always get worse because more new people are coming down the pipelines. Don't bother putting a bow on it and saying something positive because you're full of shit.

That is my wish. Shut them up forever. It makes me ashamed to be alive in this world. I'm one bad decision away from starving to death myself, but at least I have prison to depend on. All Americans have to do to get free meals for a year is spit on a Goddamn cop. You'll be hooked up properly if you do that. The worst American prison would be like a country club to these poor shitheads in the "third world". You've got a big problem when the world is abstracted like that... and put into numbers. Third? WOW! Last I heard there was just one world. A dumb one.

That is what I want. It isn't for myself. Well, it kinda is, because I'm tired of the foolish drama. But yeah, I feel like a total piece of shit as an assumingly powerless person in a world of starving kids. I don't know how anyone can sleep at night honestly. At this point it is beyond redundant. Shutting them the fuck up should be top on everyone's list.

How does my wish factor into whatever you guys talking about here?

The issue here is that fixing all of these mentioned problems isn't for any specific person to decide.. literally anyone at all. The currents of time, resources, biology, and geography have much more impact on history than any individual person.

But I'm an optimist and think if there was a button one could press to fix all of the world's problems, most people would press it, even Trump, but that's not how the world works.

Ok, to some this type of existence is absurd, but let me ask you this: what alternative is there to this type of existence? For there to be an experiencer, this is what you get.

 

[PyramidHead]

you probably get what I'm trying to say

Trying to. Almost there. I'll tell you what I want, since it is all about demanding and granting or whatever. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm supposed to tell you what I really want, right? Well, this is what I want... I want world hunger to end. It humiliating and just ignorant that there are still people starving in 2017. I am sick and tired of these irritating children complaining about starvation. If I had one wish it would be to feed everyone, just to shut them up. Their bloated bellies are repugnant. The money it takes to invade my television with their ugliness would surely be enough to buy a billion fucking tacos. These kids... they ALWAYS have flies buzzing around them. Pathetic. Wide, condemned eyes looking at the $20,000 camera, wondering why someone doesn't give a fuck about them. Jesus Fucking Christ shut these people up already. I'm going to have to put on some underwear someday and go see for my fucking self. They're no less human than I am. Last I checked there was enough food around to make everyone I know a fatfuck. But these little bastards over in whereverville are circled by buzzards and disease all day because (insert mystifying reason here). The selfishness of woman and mankind is supposedly out of ignorance, but that seems to be a stale excuse with all of the available access to information. I read that it is getting worse, not better. It will always get worse because more new people are coming down the pipelines. Don't bother putting a bow on it and saying something positive because you're full of shit.

That is my wish. Shut them up forever. It makes me ashamed to be alive in this world. I'm one bad decision away from starving to death myself, but at least I have prison to depend on. All Americans have to do to get free meals for a year is spit on a Goddamn cop. You'll be hooked up properly if you do that. The worst American prison would be like a country club to these poor shitheads in the "third world". You've got a big problem when the world is abstracted like that... and put into numbers. Third? WOW! Last I heard there was just one world. A dumb one.

That is what I want. It isn't for myself. Well, it kinda is, because I'm tired of the foolish drama. But yeah, I feel like a total piece of shit as an assumingly powerless person in a world of starving kids. I don't know how anyone can sleep at night honestly. At this point it is beyond redundant. Shutting them the fuck up should be top on everyone's list.

How does my wish factor into whatever you guys talking about here?

I think your actual wish is something different. Something more along the lines of 'I wish people would admire me for my prose'.

 

[PyramidHead]

Ok, to some this type of existence is absurd, but let me ask you this: what alternative is there to this type of existence? For there to be an experiencer, this is what you get.

Well, there it is. I don't know if 'absurd' is the term I would use, but you nailed it: to be an experiencer is to find oneself with no alternative but to experience. Moreover, we must experience within the parameters defined for us by natural law, which has endowed us with desires beyond what natural law can provide. It needn't have been like this, logically speaking, just like the teetering village needn't have been located in such an inopportune place, even if practically speaking it was an inevitable consequence of past events. An emphasis on preferences and the inherent badness of their being frustrated (in a non-instrumental way) engenders a sense of pity in me that may be along the same lines as what the Buddha described. It also equalizes everyone's status in a way that positive morality can't accomplish with a straight face. If you want to start from the premise that all life is sacred, you can derive universal compassion from there. But you'll always be left wondering what makes life sacred, what makes it so important, and without religious thinking it will just have to be accepted as a given. Start from the other end, at the predicament of life and our involuntary participation in it, and you can still find that compassion without the need to account for any otherworldly values.

If you look at this through the lens of contemporary physics, it is becoming apparent that the universe and everything in it can be accurately described as a field with local perturbations. Everything we observe except gravity can be reduced to some fluctuation effect as the field changes its state. You and I are just different fluctuations, essentially, to the point where it doesn't even make sense to use that grammatical convention anymore. So, by our best understanding of reality, everything is a single field that coalesces at certain coordinates, some of which are conscious states. A subset of these conscious states are what we call negative, or painful, and the one thing they all have in common is the accompanying desire to be in a different state. If this manages to happen, the suffering of the unsatisfied preference goes away for a while. On this view of the universe, it's no use assigning conscious experiences to distinct people, because there is just this big field; all subdivisions are conceptual inventions. If we're all pieces of the same thing on a fundamental level, and the thing has configurations it would rather not experience, it's in our self-interest to prevent those configurations from arising, or failing that, to resolve them to less unpleasant configurations. Magnus Vinding explores the implications of this idea in his book, which is free and a short read.

 

[Treedbear]

...
Preference morality has the advantage of being the closest we can get to a truly objective system, because there exists definite information about what people would rather not be the case, even if it needs to be sought out. It's not like pleasure vs. pain systems, where you have to account for people who would like a certain balance of the two, people who are masochists, and so on. Those problems all disappear if you just go by what each individual actually says they would prefer. There's something inherently bad, from the perspective of a given person, about having a want or a need go unsatisfied. Even if that want is something meta, like the want to be denied satisfaction for a while so it will be extra good when I finally get it. That counts too.
...

I don't agree with your initial premise. I recognize objective morality as based first on the metaphysical idea of existence itself. In order to exist things must survive. If nothing survives then nothing exists, and full stop. Nature has a way of sorting through things that results in systems of order. From these systems we get properties. From properties we get evolution of interactions. From this I'm confident that life becomes inevitable. Life leads to increasing complexity of things and their interactions, through natural selection, and eventually to intelligence. So far it all comes down to the realization "how could it be otherwise". There are no contradictions, aside from the ultimate question of "why does anything exist rather than nothing." (But that doesn't bother me because it might just be unanswerable.)

So we have life, and as with non-life its continued existence depends on survival. But intelligent life has the benefit of the ability to learn and pass on knowledge similar to genetics, but in a way that's intra-generational and therefore more readily adaptable. Communal species develop cultures, and culture is based on morality. Cultures and morality evolve and diversify. All are based on their survival value. There is at different times more or less advantage to liberal values that favor individuals and their preferences. But there is a balance between this and more utilitarian systems that favor the group. Just as there is an advantage for a social group to find the right balance between selfishness and altruism. Neither extreme works particularly well.

So I don't see preference morality as a universal, objective solution to moral decision making. I don't think people can be counted on to know what they want on a wide enough range of often complex issues, or what is actually best for them. What I look for is what choices lead to the continued survival of our species, even though these are also difficult questions, because if we don't then we cease to exist, and full stop. This is how nature works and it's where we derive meaning and purpose. From there we can focus on the particular issues.

 

[another1]

Alright tantric I'll do you one even better. I'm actually going to go to Wal Mart and try this avocado thing. You have to be a pretty familiar face in a store before you can start screwing around like this. Store security will ease up after you do a few years of legitimate shopping. I'm from the Kroger end of town. Not a regular Wal Marter, so I'm doing some spy stuff here. Deep cover and whatnot. I've memorized the code you gave me. I know what to do. I'm off to pay into the energy monopoly that keeps me down. You know... the people who try to make you think that water has money value. Those crazy assholes. I'll start small today, like you said.

I'll explain how to rip off every credit card company in one day when I get back. Oh and the empty deposit slip thing you can do after 4pm. Yeah a lot to cover. You don't need credit anyways because you're a criminal. You can totally hit this lick and become $2,000 richer in one day. Spreading out the ripping-offage makes suing you pointless because it would cost them more to sue you than they would get from suing you. They will just waste paper for a few years and give up. Oh and the 400 other little criminal things we should be discussing. Hold on, let me go "pay for some water". Jesus what a crock of shit this is man.

 

[PyramidHead]

...
Preference morality has the advantage of being the closest we can get to a truly objective system, because there exists definite information about what people would rather not be the case, even if it needs to be sought out. It's not like pleasure vs. pain systems, where you have to account for people who would like a certain balance of the two, people who are masochists, and so on. Those problems all disappear if you just go by what each individual actually says they would prefer. There's something inherently bad, from the perspective of a given person, about having a want or a need go unsatisfied. Even if that want is something meta, like the want to be denied satisfaction for a while so it will be extra good when I finally get it. That counts too.
...

I don't agree with your initial premise. I recognize objective morality as based first on the metaphysical idea of existence itself. In order to exist things must survive. If nothing survives then nothing exists, and full stop.

So? What is so important about survival, beyond the fact that it is one preference among many that a being could have? Life is not a special thing that leaves a metaphysical imprint on the universe, which we can consult to find out what is right and wrong. It's just another process that takes place according to laws we have devised to predict it. There is no objective reason to assign moral significance to survival as opposed to any other natural process. Here's what you seem to be forgetting with your bolded comment: most of the universe is not alive. Physics does not discriminate between organisms and inanimate objects, and inanimate objects go on existing just fine without any notion of survival, because matter and energy are constant.

Nature has a way of sorting through things that results in systems of order. From these systems we get properties. From properties we get evolution of interactions. From this I'm confident that life becomes inevitable. Life leads to increasing complexity of things and their interactions, through natural selection, and eventually to intelligence. So far it all comes down to the realization "how could it be otherwise". There are no contradictions, aside from the ultimate question of "why does anything exist rather than nothing." (But that doesn't bother me because it might just be unanswerable.)

So we have life, and as with non-life its continued existence depends on survival. But intelligent life has the benefit of the ability to learn and pass on knowledge similar to genetics, but in a way that's intra-generational and therefore more readily adaptable. Communal species develop cultures, and culture is based on morality. Cultures and morality evolve and diversify. All are based on their survival value. There is at different times more or less advantage to liberal values that favor individuals and their preferences. But there is a balance between this and more utilitarian systems that favor the group. Just as there is an advantage for a social group to find the right balance between selfishness and altruism. Neither extreme works particularly well.

You are here describing historical facts about the development of morality in human cultures over time. This can be interesting to think about, but it tells us nothing about what is actually right. Yes, morality has evolved to serve a particular fitness purpose for the propagation of genes within groups of organisms. We can acknowledge that as a curious datum of anthropology before discarding it permanently from any further discussion about what is actually right. It's a category error to evaluate moral theories based on some principle gleaned from how morality itself originated. What makes a behavior right has no connection to the most efficient means of replicating our DNA. Otherwise, the moral choice would be for men to have harems of women who would be pregnant or nursing at all times, in order to fully optimize the survival of our species; in actuality, this would amount to a reprehensible state of affairs.

To show why your reasoning doesn't work, let's put it in another context where value judgments are often made: music. We don't know exactly how or why music evolved, but there are several competing hypotheses. It could be that music started as a system of memorizing important things as a group, so that one person didn't have to remember everything. Maybe music originally served a mating function, as a backdrop to dancing, which itself evolved from fitness displays in the animal kingdom. But here's the thing: the quality of a piece of music has nothing whatsoever to do with how well it helps the listener memorize things or impress a potential mate. We're intelligent enough to create our own criteria for measuring the value of music without it depending on a contingent quirk of our ancestral history. Morality is the same way; it may very well be the case that, since we are now equipped with a capacity to consider how our actions affect others, the best use of that capacity is totally antithetical to what it originally evolved to do.

So I don't see preference morality as a universal, objective solution to moral decision making. I don't think people can be counted on to know what they want on a wide enough range of often complex issues, or what is actually best for them. What I look for is what choices lead to the continued survival of our species, even though these are also difficult questions, because if we don't then we cease to exist, and full stop. This is how nature works and it's where we derive meaning and purpose. From there we can focus on the particular issues.

Let me try and disabuse you of this notion I have bolded.

First, there is no such thing in nature as a species. On Earth, it happens to be the case that sexual reproduction doesn't go smoothly when certain organisms try to do it, and that's all there is to the idea of species. The entire taxonomy of biology is a human artifact that helps us categorize other organisms for our edification, and nothing else. So, there is no more fundamental reason to favor species survival over the survival of literally any arbitrarily selected group of things. As I said before, we are the ones who impart significance onto DNA; to nature, it's just an acid molecule with a sugar-phosphate backbone, no more or less tied to 'survival' than other compounds or their component parts.

Secondly, you are equivocating on the pronoun 'we' when you say 'because if we don't then we cease to exist.' The first time you use it in the sentence, you are referring to the current population of humans. The next time, you are referring to the abstract (and arbitrarily defined) concept of the human species. I will make this utterly clear for you: both groups will eventually cease to exist forever. In fact, for most of the history of the universe so far there were no humans, and it is certainly plausible that there will be no humans for the vast majority of the universe's future. When humans go extinct, there will be no remaining humans to lament their absence, and after a few centuries at most, every trace of their existence will probably be gone. This is true whether it happens tomorrow or in a million years, and a million years is NOTHING in the grander scheme of cosmic time... so why is it so critical that we keep propagating ourselves, not just as something that could be fun to do, but as a moral imperative?

This leads to my final criticism, which is that you seem to be saying that 'we cease to exist, and full stop' (again, using 'we' to indicate the human species) is by itself a consequence we must either avoid or postpone for as long as possible. Individual humans have things they want to do while they are alive, so they try to push back the date of their deaths by various means. But future humans who have not yet been born have no interest in doing anything, because they don't yet exist. So, as a hypothetical, imagine if everybody voluntarily decided to make this generation of humans the last one. Suppose if you like that robots would care for the elderly before they naturally die. Nothing else would be different, except nobody had any more kids--this would also free up a lot of resources, since we wouldn't have to worry about future generations or the environment, for example. If you're correct, this peaceful end to human existence would amount to a moral atrocity, but it's hard to see why, assuming it is completely voluntary. Nobody is actually worse off as a result of not existing in the first place; if they were, every moment of time spent doing something other than making babies would be morally wrong. Is this what you actually believe?

 

[another1]

tantric. I forgot to do it and I feel like it is a better protest to just avoid Wal Mart. Everything was fine until they came around here. People are so addicted to shopping at the place that makes them poor. Funny stuff but hey what is the next level of the plan? I'm good on avacados and I do believe you. I trust you, tantric. What is your advice? I don't want to steal things that are like... elements. No copper, gold. Everything is made elements but you know what I mean. No stuff like that because it feels too much like slavery. And it seems backwards and pointless. Like why not just go to prison if I want to do the rational thing? Oh and tantric, believe me buddy, that is where you are going. Not trying to jinx you but your attitude is a concern. You already know this because they sent you to a brainwasher. It is how you react, huh. It isn't the fact that you sell your body everyday to buy things just to keep it alive. It isn't that life is just a series of crimes against you - that you're somehow you're supposed to feel responsible for. No... it is how you react to the situation. That is what they will tell you, and they're right, but not in the way they mean. How are you going to react? That is the question. Hypothetically bigger licks get you more money to work with. Remember that as a criminal in America your punishment will be free food and no responsibility for a bout five years. You said that your last prison stay didn't come with a felony, so you're golden. Not much chance of doing more than five years unless you kill someone or commit robbery. Strangely enough you could fuck a child and get three years plus a lot of probation. Yet steal some pieces of paper from a drug addict working a register and you'll get ten to life. Yeah... Okay. So remember those are the type of people you're dealing with when shoplifting. They value pieces of paper over human flesh.

The front of the store always has big stuff. They think people won't steal it. Guess again. You've been to Elder Berrman and places like that, right? Where rich assholes spend money you should have? The Bedroom suites are right in the front. Near are $500 throw blankets made from the fur of Serengeti Tigers and al sorts of horrible yet valuable things. They stole the fur from a living animal. You are a living animal so steal it back. Sell it for some baking soda to make your drugs or whatever. How do you wanna do your startup lick, is what I'm saying. You're far beyond avocado licks already I presume so hypothetically how would you go about becoming rich enough for me to hate you? That is when you know you've made it man. When everybody hates you. That is so weird. But yeah I'm down for getting at least a million sometime before my death. I'm not a criminal and I have ideas that don't involve prison - but prison is a perfect backup plan.